The Woman Who Died a Lot

6. Monday: TJ-Maxx

I walked through the Brunel Centre feeling a sense of disappointment mixed with the realization that until my health improved, things were going to be very different. I couldn’t do what I wanted to do, which led me to the inevitable conclusion that I couldn’t be who I wanted to be. My purpose was suddenly blunted, and I didn’t like it.

I arrived at the Swindon branch of TJ-Maxx at a little after two. I knew as well as anyone that the store hadn’t been deliberately set up as a bargain store for end-of-line designer garments, but rather a high-security facility for the imprisonment of dangerous criminals. Swindon’s most celebrated convict had been Oswald Danforth, whose punishment was to be trapped in an endlessly recurring eight-minute loop of time. In his case while his girlfriend, Trudi, tried on a camisole. She never knew about the loop, of course—but Danforth did. That’s why it was called TJ-Maxx: Temporal-J, Maximum Xecurity. It had been runby the ChronoGuard. The official title was “Closed-Loop Temporal-Field Containment,” but SO-12 simply called it being “in the loop.” It was cruel and unusual, sure, but it was cheap and required no guards, food or health care.

Or at least it had. There were no prisoners now—not since the ChronoGuard was disbanded and all its technology decommissioned.

I found Landen staring at the frying pans on the second floor, wondering, as he usually did, whether they were more expensive than at the co-op and, if so, what the point was of selling them.

“Hey,” I said.

“Hey,” he replied, putting back a cheese grater before adding, “No cookies at the hunt, sir.”

“What?”

“The password?”

“Oh. ‘It’s not a cookie, it’s a . . .’ Shit. Hang on.”

As I stood there trying to remember the last word, I saw Landen’s hand move to his pocket. Not usually an issue, only I knew he kept a COP357 there, a small pistol that packed enough power to punch holes in . . . well, almost anything.

“Newton,” I said with a stupid smile. “It’s a Newton. ‘It’s not a cookie, it’s a Newton.’ ”

Landen breathed a sigh of relief and took his hand out of his pocket. “Don’t do that,” he said. “It just makes me jumpy.”

“Sorry.”

“How did it go?”

“Pretty shittily.”

I told Landen all about Braxton’s offer, and how Phoebe Smalls would be heading up the Literary Detectives’ office, and how I felt that everything was just falling down around my ears because of the blasted accident. I may even have mentioned something about “unfairness” or “a waste of good experience” before I’d gone on to a Level 2 Rant at that point, the sort where you raise your voice in public and sound like an idiot, but without realizing it. I paused at the end, expecting him to agree, but he didn’t. He simply stared at me with an expression of benign conciliation.

“Look,” I said, “I’m kind of looking for agreement here.”

He took a deep breath. “Listen, Thursday, I’m your biggest fan. I’m your husband, lover, best friend, confidant, back rubber, bridge partner. You’ve even got one of my kidneys. I have invested in Thursday futures my entire life and not regretted it for one moment. I’m the last person to stand in the way of anything you want to do and would follow you anywhere. But even I think you should be taking it easy. They damn near killed you, and . . . well, I think you’ve done enough for the moment. You deserve some downtime. We all deserve some downtime. A change of pace.”

Landen had been on at me since I turned fifty to slow down. The accident had made it easier for him. Before, he was a man in love. Now he was a man with a mission to protect the one he loved. And he was making it hard to ignore him. But I tried nonetheless.

“What are we here for anyway?” I asked. “None of us shop at TJ-Maxx.”

“Aornis Hades,” he said. “We need to find her.”

“Any particular reason?”

“Because SO-5 has failed, and finding Aornis is the only way to get rid of the mindworm.”

“What mindworm?”

“The one she gave to . . . someone we know.”

“Have we talked about it?”

“Often. That’s part of the mindworm.”

“Ah.”

I followed Landen to the manager’s office. The assistant manager rose to shake our hands. He was an earnest, helpful young man, part of the retail industry’s fast-track scheme to have people at a regional sales level in as little as twenty-six years. He said his name was Jimmy-G and that he’d read our request and was keen to help. We explained to him that we wanted to see the security-camera footage for the day that Aornis was released, and he said he had to clear that with head office, so he went out of the room to make the call.

“So let’s suppose I slowed down,” I said to Landen. “What would I do?”

“As Braxton suggests: become chief librarian.”

“Aside from that.”

“You could start a restaurant. You do really good Sunday roasts.”

“A restaurant that only opens one day a week is destined to fail,” I pointed out.

“Then that’s our unique selling point—Sunday lunches . . . on weekdays.”

“You’ve got it all planned out, haven’t you?”

“No, I’m making it up as I go along.”

“A restaurateur?”

“Okay, maybe not. But your career path has been heading in only one direction for a while now, and, biggest fan or not, I don’t want to lose you.”

“And I don’t want to be lost.”

“Then tell Braxton you’ve changed your mind. That you’ll take the job.”

And at that moment the assistant manager walked back in.

“That’s all cleared with head office,” he said with a smile. “If it were anyone but you, Detective Next, we’d not entertain the idea. In fact, helping you now makes me feel like what I should be doing. I received my Letter of Destiny last week. I would have been running all the enloopment facilities for SO-12 after I was retired from field duty when a jump to the sixteenth century dumped me in the forty-fifth due to a gimbal-lock precession error on the fluxgates.”

“What does that mean?”

“I’ve absolutely no idea. I didn’t get the ChronoGuard career. I got the retailing one. Ask me about monthly sales figures, dismissal procedures and weekend comparison stats and I’m your man. This way.”

He led us through to the security office, which was of a larger-than-normal size. On the main console were several smaller monitors that surrounded a central, larger one, and they all looked a bit dusty. In fact, the whole room looked very disused, and several cardboard boxes of wire hangers and security tags were lying on the floor.

“No one has used this place since they switched off the enloopment engines two years ago,” said Jimmy-G. “Before my time, I might add.”

After the facility was shut down, the prisoners had been transferred to conventional prisons, but Aornis Hades was different. With a rap sheet that included extortion, blackmail, thought crimes, theft, torture and murder, she had her sentence commuted to quadruple life with added life. She was transferred out, but that was the last anyone heard from her. Quite where she was transferred to, who had transferred her and whether she ever got there was anyone’s guess. It was why looping was so perfect for her. No one to memory-manipulate.

The assistant manager threw several switches, and after a wait of several minutes for the valves to warm up, the central monitor sprang into life. Jimmy-G punched in the date and rough time, and a broad image of the shop’s interior appeared.

“Here,” said Jimmy-G, “it’s easier if you do it. If you want to change cameras, use this switch. To shuttle back and forth, it’s this knob here.”

We found her by the checkout, a well-dressed young lady with a sour expression and her features partially hidden beneath a large, floppy hat. It was definitely her, though— the Hades chin and nose were unmistakable. On either side of her were two prison guards, the first of whom was holding Aornis by the arm and the second of whom was holding a clipboard.

“Can you get his badge?” I asked, and Landen zoomed in further.

“Quinn,” he said as I scribbled it down on a notepad, “and the second is Highsmith.”

“Anything else?”

“Wait,” said Landen, zooming and shifting so he could read the clipboard that was tucked under Highsmith’s arm.

“It looks like ‘Tesco,’” muttered Landen, staring at the indistinct lettering. “That can’t be right.”

“Aornis liked shopping.”

“In Abercrombie & Fitch, she did,” said Landen, “not Tesco’s.”

“I can give you a hard copy,” said Jimmy-G, and he printed one, which was just the same: hazy and indistinct, but this time on paper instead of a screen.

We searched some more, but the only other picture of Aornis and the two guards was as they were leaving the facility two minutes later. We stood up and thanked the assistant manager as we walked out.

“Glad to be of help,” he said, shaking our hands and giving us some discount vouchers. “Tell your son that Jimmy-G would have been proud working under him. If I had. Which I won’t.”

“You would have known him?” I asked, intrigued that I’d met two people in one day who were ex–potential ChronoGuard.

“Yes, he helped me find a new job when the service wanted to retire me after my accident. He would have been a good friend. Will you ask him if he wants to come to my Destiny Aware Support Group meeting tomorrow? I’m setting it up for ex–potential ChronoGuard who have received their life summaries, and Friday would be very welcome. We need guidance, and he would have been there for us time and time again. And might again. For the first time. You know. Anyway, it’s at the sports center at eight.”

“I don’t think he’ll want to come.”

“If he’s anything like the person I’m told he might have turned out to be, he’d say no but come anyway.”

“I agree. I’ll tell him.”

We walked out of TJ-Maxx and sat on a bench to compare notes.

“Quinn and Highsmith,” I said. “We can get Millon to look them up.”

“They were traveling by car,” said Landen, staring at several other images that Jimmy-G had printed out. “Those are car keys, and that’s a road atlas.”

“So not local. Are you sure it says Tesco’s?”

“You have a look, clever clogs.”

“You know my vision is mildly blurred.”

“That’s not my fault.”

“Well, it’s certainly not mine.”

“Am I interrupting something?”

It was Phoebe Smalls.

“Nothing at all,” I said. “Phoebe Smalls, this is my husband, Landen. Landen, meet the new head of SO-27.”

“You seem quite young,” said Landen.

“It’s due to my age,” said Phoebe, and Landen laughed, and I glared at him.

“What do you think that says?” said Landen, handing the picture to Phoebe before I could stop him. I glared at him again, and he mouthed, What?

“Tresco,” said Phoebe, handing the picture back. “The prison island off the coast of Cornwall. That’s my guess.”

“That’s exactly what we thought,” I said hurriedly, “but always best to get a second opinion.”

“Oh?” said Phoebe.

“Congratulations on your appointment toSO-27,” said Landen. “We just heard. Who are you considering as your second-incommand?”

I looked at him. He was using his “I’m so really up to something” voice. “Landen . . . ?”

“That’s exactly why I’m here,” said Phoebe. “Earlier you generously asked me to work with you, and I thought I would return the compliment. I want you to be my deputy at SO-27, Thursday. My number two. My rock. What do you say?”

“That’s a very kind offer,” I said, “and although SpecOps is in my blood and I would dearly love to accept . . . I’ve just accepted the job of chief librarian from Braxton.”

“Ah,” she said. “Now, that’s a shame.”

“Yes, it is, isn’t it?” I rose from the bench with considerably less elegance than I had hoped. “Good luck with the job,” I told her. “I’ll expect our paths will cross pretty soon.”

“I’ll look forward to it.”

We exchanged farewells and walked off. I didn’t speak until we were heading back toward Clary-Lamarr.

“I hate that Phoebe Smalls.”

“Don’t be so cross, Thursday,” said Landen, stifling a smile. “She seemed rather nice. Kind of like you.”

“She’s nothing like me.”

But she was, of course. Just younger. Once we were back in the Skyrail car heading home, Landen passed me his cell phone and I called Braxton to accept the chief librarian job.

“Ballocks,” I said as soon as I had snapped the phone shut.

“Now what?”

“The Tesco/Tresco thing. Before my accident I would have made that connection instantly. I used to be sharper.”

“It’s the Dizuperadol. I said you should stick to just three patches.”

“I know. I hate the stuff, but without it I can barely function.”

Landen laid his hand affectionately on my thigh, and I let my head fall onto his shoulder. We sat like that for several minutes. I wasn’t going to tell him I had upped my patch dosage to four.

“Landen?”

“Yes?”

“Aornis give the mindworm to me, didn’t she?”

“Yes,” said Landen quietly, “damaging, annoying and potentially destructive of personality and family. And since those memories are as much part of her as you, there’s only one way we’re going to be able to get rid of them.” He patted the pocket where I knew he kept his pistol. “We’re going to deal with the Aornis situation once and for all.”

I looked into Landen’s eyes for a long time. He was deadly serious.

“Is the BookWorld the mindworm?”

“No, that’s real enough.”

“The whole Granny Next thing?”

“No.”

“I’m not me at all but someone else?”

“No.”

“Then what?”

“Look at your hand.”

So I did, and I was confused, and angry. And not for the first time today, apparently.